


Blue

by CommanderTeatime



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Development, Character Study, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Confident Katsuki Yuuri, Eros Katsuki Yuuri, Established Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Hasetsu, Homesickness, M/M, Pining, Pining Victor Nikiforov, Post-Canon, Saint Petersburg, color symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 20:30:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17608421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderTeatime/pseuds/CommanderTeatime
Summary: He’s the soft blue of a forest in winter, the soft dying sun against the bright snow and bitter cold. Yuuri is the Neva River reflecting St. Petersburg’s sparkling beauty. He’s sunlight in the long winter days of darkness and darkness in the bright summer nights. He’s home, and somehow, he always has been.Viktor has just never known to look for him.





	Blue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure what got me started on this, but something did. I really wanted to maximize Yuuri's character development through his choices and to show just how Viktor compliments those choices, because I feel like often times, people forget that Viktor is fully aware of what Yuuri is capable of. So, here's Viktor pining for the true Yuuri, and for everything he knows Yuuri can accomplish.

Yuuri’s favorite color is blue. 

It’s not exactly a challenge to figure it out. 

It’s the color of his glasses, the case he tucks them into when he steps onto the ice, the color of Yuuri’s poodle phone case. Viktor tries not to smile when he turns it over in his hands, watching Yuuri as he skates around the rink-- once, twice, a slightly faster, more anxious third time. Even the jacket on the chair beside him is blue, and although his warm up jacket looks gray in the lights overhead, Viktor knows its blue.

All of it is blue.

The music Yuuri skates to is blue-- it always has been, and Viktor is sure it always will be. 

After Sochi he had taken every free moment of his time to watch Yuuri’s practice videos. He was one of the few skaters who didn’t squander practice tapes and progress under lock and key. Every two weeks or so, another video either practice or tutorial would surface, Yuuri in blue skating to blue music.

Most of them were from Instagram, small snippets of Yuuri at a distance as he threw himself around on the ice, both a marionette and the puppeteer. 

The music was always  _ him  _ in a strange way. Soft in a way that ached, dreamlike with a bitter edge, cold like the ice he skated on. When the tone shifted, so did Yuuri, and with each season, Yuuri’s tone became less saturated, less him and more of what others thought he was and expected him to be.

Those were his cracks. 

He hated admitting even to himself that he had taken notes on Yuuri’s cracks, on his struggles and fears. It felt predatory, looking at Yuuri like a coach, like a piece of art from afar worthy of his commentary. 

Viktor thought back to how Yakov had observed him for a full two years before he decided Viktor was worth his time. He thought about how he had showed off a quad salchow in juniors, perfectly placed in front of Yakov. He thought of how Yakov knew Viktor’s fears before he knew them, how the man would check in on him under the pretense of making sure he was still alive. 

Yakov had seen his loneliness, just as Viktor had seen Yuuri’s anxiety. 

Yuuri’s cracks were something to be utilized, much like Viktor’s own. He bled from them, the blue he was afraid to release, but released through self-sabotage and deprecation.

It was his passion, oozing onto the ice with every fall, every shy teary-eyed interview, promising to do better next time. Viktor could see the pain in the way Yuuri talked to cameras, the way he looked at the judges without meeting their eyes, how he always seemed to be just in the corner of every video, every photo. 

The blue that leaked out of him was deep and rich, it was beauty misplaced, opportunity and potential not yet discovered. Viktor wanted nothing more than to drown in it.

He wants Yuuri to drown the world in it, to coat the world with such beauty and grace, to saturate the world with his talent through the story he tells with every movement, ever performance, program, and season.

Instead, Yuuri covers himself, creating an image of himself so distorted that it’s oppressive. The way Yuuri skates, wants to skate, the way he is, and the way people want him to be is such an astounding clash of electric blue costumes and evening blue smiles that Viktor has to take a deep breath. Yuuri is using the ugliest shade of powder blue paint to cover up what could be a record-breaking view.

Viktor doesn’t have a chance to tell him, or to help him peel it all away like the old wallpaper in Yakov’s dining room. The video the triplets release does that instead and it takes Viktor’s aching with it.

Even without Yuuri’s atrocious costumes,  the overwhelming contrast in who Yuuri is on ice, who he is on a pole, and who he is at home is almost enough to send Viktor back to St. Petersburg, Aeroloft delays and all. 

But Yuuri’s blue returns to him in pieces, in small ever-evolving glimmers behind a mask of self-hatred and questioning. 

It’s almost like when he was thirteen, sitting at the kitchen table with his reading assignment in front of him. The house was always quiet, Lilia and Yakov in separate rooms giving Viktor the time and silence to focus, though not on school work. He would watch the prism Lilia had dangling over the window above the sink, he would watch it soak in the sunlight, spinning and never casting the same colorful shade again. 

It’s in the way Yuuri watches him stake in Hasetsu, the way he counts the beats of Stammi Vicino on the side of the boards without realizing it. It’s in Yuuri’s hesitancy, how simply he can skate compulsory figures, the gentle pause in his voice when he thinks over what he’s going to say. It’s a second, sometimes three, where Yuuri places his determination ahead of his fears.

It’s only when Yuuri says that eros makes him think of katsudon that Viktor realizes he isn’t even aware of his own bleeding. 

He stays up that night, wondering just how dense Yuuri must be, but then he remembers the banquet. Yuuri had been so blue, reflecting every facet of himself like the prism over Lilia’s kitchen sink.

It’s when he’s incredibly late to Yuuri and Yurio’s practices that he knows he’s going to make Yuuri aware in some way, and at the same time, he’s going to prove to Yurio he, too, has cracks. 

He does. Just not as he had planned. 

Yurio disintegrates on the ice during Agape. Viktor can see it in the way his back stiffens, how his arms move through the stilted poses of ballet. He’s breaking his own heart, none of his movements are his. Instead, they belong to Yakov, Lilia, and whoever else has helped shape Yuri into the Ice Tiger of Russia.

Yuuri doesn’t even have to take his skate guards off to lose himself.

It’s like watching an avalanche how Yuuri’s fingers twitch at his sides when he watches Yuri. He doesn’t know where to put his arms, if he should have them at his sides or across his chest. Viktor wants to solve it for him by taking his hands and holding them, but instead he watches Yuuri when the anxiety begins to crush him. 

Yuuri’s hands are in his hair, pulling at it, he’s looking down and knowing, thinking, feeling that he’s next. His resolve, all of the distance he’s put between himself and Viktor, it’s all still there between them when Viktor moves in front of him, wanting nothing more than to touch him. Viktor wonders if any of it is cracking, if he’s breaking through to Yuuri’s true self when Yuuri looks up at him on the verge of tears. 

“Yuuri, it’s your turn.”

Yuuri is still struggling to get out of his own head, to surface out of blue that’s hidden underneath.

Eros Yuuri, another mask he’s decided to hide behind, comes forward. “I’m going to become a super, tasty pork cutlet bowl, so please watch me!” 

That fraction, that small minuscule piece, of Yuuri, cutting through the mask, is enough to make Viktor forget to breathe. The distance between them, it all vanishes when Yuuri holds him close, as though Viktor is the one bleeding. 

“Promise!” Yuuri begs, although it is in no way a question.

Part of Viktor, the ghost of the competitor, wants to get Yuuri on the ice as soon as possible, he wants to remove the crowd, stand by the gate, and watch as Yuuri Katsuki releases all that he’s held back. 

_ “Of course. I love pork cutlet bowls.”  _

And somehow, in the music, Viktor finds more blue. 

Eros becomes the paleness of Hasetsu’s sky, the way it looks through budding springtime trees. Oddly, it’s homesickness, but not for Russia, it’s for a place Viktor has never been before. Later, he knows that it’s the way Yuuri wakes up the morning, stretching his cold feet against Viktor’s legs before he rolls over and falls back to sleep without setting another alarm. It’s how the trees along the Japanese hillside turn dark when a storm approaches, looking almost blue. It’s how the calm ocean waves turn dark with strength. 

Eros is still a mask, but truer to Yuuri’s blue. 

In another way, Eros is everything Yuuri is capable of, but doesn’t want to be. It’s the dark blue of Japan’s olympic team jackets, the cold comfort of landing a quad flip with no one to satisfy but himself, the sensual aggression only found in sixteen flutes of champagne and the devastation of coming in sixth at the GPF. 

It’s the blue of an ice skating rink, being the only person on the ice in an empty stadium. It’s the feeling of hearing his own skates, feeling the way he can dig into the surface with the toepick of his skate through the beginning of Stammi. It’s the blue that was missing from St. Petersburg, only found at the Hermitage in the softness of a gray night. 

He wants to ask Yuuri what Eros really is, what it means, and where he finds it. 

The mask comes off when Yuuri performs Yuuri on Ice. 

Yuuri wears his blue, the comfort of stars in a winter night sky, the warmth of his smile, his eyes. It doesn’t bleed, it shines, through what he allows them to see. 

He lets them see the gentle start of his career-- the bee program he performed when he was eight, the middle school photo that his mother keeps on the counter in the kitchen beside a photo of Yuuri’s college graduation. It’s his evolution, his falls, his dreams, everything that he has always been. 

The blue that Yuuri skates is soft, it’s the warmth of his smile when Yuuko teases them over their warm-up music, it’s the small blue flowers at Yuu-topia, the way Yuuri flops back on his bed, his arms spread out, just before someone calls him for something.

Viktor can see Yuuri’s quiet reflections in the way he jumps, as though compulsory figures have brought this out in him.

He’s beautiful, he’s himself, and nothing else, and that, is what’s captivating. 

When he skates, Viktor can’t even find himself to care about Yuuri’s fingers, touching the ice, and he knows he should. He knows that Yakov would’ve stopped him, would’ve sent him back to the start of his program. 

This is the Yuuri Viktor had fallen so in love with. The pieces, every single one, they all come together, and the program, even the buzz Yuuri feels afterward, it leaves him breathless. With Barcelona, it’s almost like Yuuri has left it behind. 

He knows better than to think that. Viktor knows that Yuuri still has his mask, that it surfaces every time his anxiety tries to coat him in bright, fluorescent blues. Viktor takes to scheduling practice whenever Yakov and Yuri aren’t there. He locks the rink, even the observation room. 

Being invited to see such vulnerability, to such truth, as a coach and a fiance, it feels like Yuuri has more than just his heart. 

Viktor thinks of Worlds, how Yuuri will crush him and Yurio with a smile and a soft laugh. 

He kicks up into a flip and follows through with the rest of his choreography-- soft three turn, think of Yuuri when he skates figures. Viktor slips out of his routine with a spin, stealing the essence of Stammi Vicino, only he doesn’t force the turns tighter. He lets himself spin out of it and crouches there, on the ice. 

It’s always missing something so integral, so unexplainable and necessary that it leaves Viktor feeling discouraged. 

He isn’t even aware of Yuuri’s presence until he sneezes and Viktor finds himself on his feet again, skating around the rink through the soft build of the gentle Russian waltz he has selected. Yuuri usually sits up towards the top of the rink, in the shadow of the observation box. 

Viktor tries not to let the aggressive competitor inside of him take over. The feeling that comes with Yuuri and knowing that Yuuri is watching him, is enough for him to ruin the take-off of a quad flip and turn it into a messy ‘floop’.

He lands cleanly, keeps him moving, shaky, almost, and it’s enough to ruin whatever he had been trying to accomplish. He skates out of it, lazily circling around and filling the second half of the music with what Yakov would consider a waste of time and what Viktor thinks of as a time to reflect. 

The music shifts to something far more melancholy and heartbreaking, a lone violin calling out to a duet, one that never follows. The orchestra swells beneath, the soft hum of winds. It reminds Viktor of Yuuri when he skates figures, a shade of icy pale blue, bordering into a hazy lilac. 

“What were you thinking of?” Yuuri asks, and his voice nearly startles Viktor half to death. 

The song ends and Viktor skates to the boards to stop it, but Yuuri is already there, pausing it from playing the Russian waltz again. 

“The flip?” 

Yuuri shakes his head, he’s smiling in a way that tells Viktor he already knows. “Before that, before you came out of your combo spin.” 

“I wasn’t.” Viktor’s answer is honest, because he wasn’t thinking at all, and Yuuri frowns at that, just a little. “I was… I don’t know, feeling?” 

“What were you feeling?” 

Viktor lets the ice carry him back just a little. “This.” He says simply, and its too much to explain with any of the words he knows in any language. “You.” He says in a small breath of air. 

Yuuri is leaning against the boards now, Eros is slipping from him, leaking to the ice and puddling somewhere at his shadow. “Me?”

“No, katsudon.” Viktor answers, and it’s impossible not to smile as he puts more distance between them. He looks at the ice and it’s hard not to think about everything that they’ve gone through, all that they’ve overcome in such a short amount of time. 

The Yuuri that’s watching him is so different from the Yuuri that approached him. He’s soft and gentle, but knows when not to be. Yuuri isn’t delicate, not with him, he’s no longer the electric blue costumes and ties he had tried so desperately to hide behind. The mask of Eros Yuuri is even misplaced. The confidence, the Yuuri from Yuuri on ice, with all of his potential and ability, his boldness and charm not entirely feigned... that Yuuri is watching him.

He’s the soft blue of a forest in winter, the soft dying sun against the bright snow and bitter cold. Yuuri is the Neva River reflecting St. Petersburg’s sparkling beauty. He’s sunlight in the long winter days of darkness and darkness in the bright summer nights. He’s home, and somehow, he always has been. 

Viktor has just never known to look for him.

He’s not aware that he’s fallen into figures like Yuuri does until the gentle music of his waltz disappears, replaced with Stammi Vicino. Viktor is even less aware of the fact that Yuuri is on the ice with him until he feels Yuuri take his hand and pull him through one of the careful loops he's carved into the ice with his skates. 

The smile Yuuri gives him, the peace it fills him with--

all of it is blue.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! Please let me know if you enjoyed this. I'm thinking about possibly writing some more Yuri on Ice stuff.


End file.
